OVERVIEW

This is a short overview of some coding conventions in the Phoenix source.

String objects use a unary ~ (tilde) operator as a shorthand for casting the
string to a (char *).  This syntax is used extensively throughout the source.

The Object base class is used for objects which are to be reference-counted.
Only smart pointers in the Pointer class are counted as official references
for this counting, but some sections of code use real pointers temporarily.
Real pointers will not keep the object from being destroyed when the last
smart pointer to the object is destroyed or stops referring to that object,
which is why real pointers to reference-counted Objects are only temporary.
(Some object classes are NOT derived from Object, when the reference-counting
semantics are deemed unnecessary.)